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Introduction to Neolithic Figurine Art

 

Introduction


The first signs of experimental cultivation of plants and domestication of animals, which marked the beginning of the Neolithic Age, were associated with the Epipalaeolithic hunters of the ninth millennium in Syria-Palestine. During the eighth millennium the new productive activities were well instituted and then expanded, possibly by means of some primary trade. So, in the seventh millennium Neolithic communities have spread in Mesopotamia and the Caucasus, up to Southern Palestine. In the course of the sixth and fifth millennia these Neolithic cultures have been attested to the rest of the Balkans and to Southeastern Europe as well as in North Africa.

 

Although chronology is (and seemingly will be for some time to come) very confusing, no archaeometrical method has yet redefined irrevocably the boundaries between the Pleistocene and the Holocene (± 10.000 B.P.). For that reason chronological frames used in this study are based on the C14 lower half-life..

 

The first goal of this study is the presentation of the figurine material and its incorporation in the Neolithic cultural background (in regions presenting the earliest traces of Neolithic habitation, such as the Near and Middle East, Asia Minor, Cyprus, North Africa, the Balkans and S-E Europe). The second goal concerns the interpretation of the figurine art on the basis of the author’s new methodological approach.

 

map

Introduction | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |
Chapter 4: Α.
- Β. - C. - D. - Ε. - F. | Chapter 5